This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: BBC
November 30, 2007
A bag belonging to a World War II soldier from Lancashire has been discovered in the Egyptian desert after lying there for more than 60 years.
Alec Ross, from Burnley, lost the bag containing personal letters and photos, while serving with the 8th Army.
Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found the bag in the Sahara desert and traced Mr Ross's family through a BBC website on World War II.
Source: LiveScience
November 9, 2007
Jezebel, the queen whose name became synonymous with all things lewd and wicked, probably wielded a fair bit of power in ancient Israel, suggests a stone document seal newly traced to the Biblical "bad girl."
Originally discovered in Israel in 1964, the intricate seal was suspected all along to belong to Queen Jezebel, but confusion over the letters engraved on the stone left some uncertainty.
Recently, closer scrutiny of the seal's engraving revealed markings
Source: AP
November 9, 2007
The family of man who held a fragment of a more than 1,000-year-old manuscript of the Hebrew Bible for six decades as a good luck charm will present it to a Jerusalem institute next week, officials said Thursday.
The parchment, about "the size of a credit card," is believed to be part of the most authoritative manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, the Aleppo Codex, said Michael Glatzer, academic secretary of the Yad Ben Zvi institute.
It contains verses from the Boo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 30, 2007
Deep divisions have emerged at the heart of Danish government after a bitter row blew up over the country's failure to extradite a Nazi war criminal, a Dane, from Germany.
There were angry exchanges between Danish politicians following The Daily Telegraph's report on Søren Kam's peaceful life in the sleepy Bavarian town of Kempten im Allgäu.
The 86-year old former SS-Obersturmfuehrer has been indicted for murder in Denmark and is wanted for questioning for his alleged r
Source: BBC
November 23, 2007
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's... well he doesn't have a name yet, but the Orange Order hopes to win a new generation of fans with their own superhero.
The origins of the Orange Order may date from the 17th century battle for supremacy between Protestantism and Catholicism, but they have high hopes for this 21st century makeover.
King William has been an Orange icon for more than 300 years, but it seems the curly wig and pointed hat combo were not doing it for the
Source: Press Release--University of Texas
November 15, 2007
Challenging the idea that racism education could be harmful to students, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin found the results of learning about historical racism are primarily positive. The study appears in the November/December issue of the journal Child Development.
Psychologists Rebecca Bigler and Julie Milligan Hughes found white children who received history lessons about discrimination against famous African Americans had significantly more positive attitudes t
Source: Salon
November 29, 2007
It was one of the most dramatic moments in the
modern history of the Middle East — the world's nations voting one by one in
the U.N. General Assembly to partition the Holy Land into separate Jewish and
Arab states.
Exactly 60 years later, the concept remains at the heart of renewed attempts to
resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At this week's U.S.-sponsored peace
conference outside Washington, Israel and the Palestinians again pledged
efforts to wrap up a peace treaty that wou
Source: Der Spiegel
November 29, 2007
The war cemeteries of the Western Front are as well-maintained as if they had been built this year. Their poignant message of peace is equally fresh.
World War I ended 89 years ago in November 1918, only a handful of veterans are still alive and family memories of the uncles, fathers and grandfathers who fought are fading fast.
But the cemeteries and war memorials of France and Belgium, where much of the worst fighting took place, remain as pristine and well-tended as i
Source: CNN
November 29, 2007
Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney both criticized the Confederate flag during the CNN/YouTube debate on Wednesday.
The flag happens to be hoisted on the Statehouse grounds in the early primary state of South Carolina, where both candidates are leading in polls.
The candidates were asked by YouTube user Leroy Brooks from Houston, Texas if "this flag right here represents the symbol of racism, a symbol of political ideol
Source: Reuters
November 29, 2007
A 200-year-old cannon wheeled out by Indian villagers to greet a visiting minister exploded after being overstuffed with gunpowder, killing two men, a newspaper reported Thursday.
Residents of Badoli village in western India's Rajasthan state had planned the gun salute Tuesday evening to welcome Kirodi Lal Meena, a state minister, the Times of India reported.
The minister left immediately after the accident, which also injured six other people.
Source: Der Spiegel
November 29, 2007
Holocaust researchers are delighted that the massive International Tracing Service archive in Germany has finally opened its doors to the public. Families of Holocaust victims now have an unprecedented chance to learn about their relatives' fates.
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 28, 2007
He is a French aristocrat who created a stir in America as a precocious teenager, and then returned decades later to the United States to be celebrated in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston.
The Marquis de Lafayette? Yes, of course. But that was then. This time, it is his great-great-great grandson.
Arnaud Meunier du Houssoy arrived in New York from Paris on Saturday to be celebrated at events in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the nation's capital to mark
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 29, 2007
Germany continues to shelter a former SS officer who is wanted for murder and for his alleged role in the deportation of hundreds of Jews to Nazi concentration camps.
The Daily Telegraph has tracked down former SS-Obersturmfuehrer Søren Kam to the peaceful suburbs of Kempten im Allgäu, a town about 75 miles from Munich.
Dr Efraim Zuroff, a veteran Israeli Nazi-hunter, will be in Europe next week to mount “Operation Last Chance”, to bring men such as Kam to justice and t
Source: AP
November 15, 2007
A Vietnam War-era artillery shell detonated when a man tried sawing into it for explosives, killing six children standing nearby, an official said Friday.
Three of the children died instantly and the others died on the way to hospitals following Thursday's incident in Tan Loi village in Binh Phuoc province, some 190 kilometers (120 miles) north of Ho Chi Minh City, said village military chief Le Viet Truyen.
Source: http://www.uq.edu.au
November 26, 2007
Australia's early Catholic bishops failed Aborigines by paying lip service to their plight and not providing enough resources to help them, according to a new historical study.
The study, by UQ PhD recipient Stefano Girola, from the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, examined the policies and attitudes of the Catholic hierarchy to Indigenous people from 1885 until 1967.
“I stress the Catholic hierarchy because there were always nuns and missionaries
Source: Fox News
November 28, 2007
An Ohio high school has canceled its student theater production of "Ten Little Indians" after local residents complained about a racial slur in the original title of the Agatha Christie novel, which never has been published under that name in this country.
The best-selling murder mystery originally was named "Ten Little N---ers" when it was published in England in 1939.
The name of the book was changed for production in the United States, and the sch
Source: AP
November 28, 2007
Deep in Richard Nixon's White House files sit letters from a long-forgotten lobbying campaign to make Mark Felt head of the FBI. Instead, Felt became Deep Throat.
The National Archives released more than 10,000 pages of documents from the Nixon presidency on Wednesday and among them are the urgings of past and present FBI agents and other interested citizens to appoint Felt, then the No. 2 FBI official, as director. Associates described his "outstanding loyalty."
Source: Salon
November 29, 2007
New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt did me the honor yesterday of replying to my column last week asking him to stop the brawl over Ronald Reagan and race on the paper's Op-Ed page. Hoyt declined to step in, but he did pass along news that Times editorial pages editor Andrew Rosenthal had already said, "Enough," which means we won't have another unconvincing rejoinder on the topic from David Brooks. Thanks, Andy! Hoyt defended the Op-Ed page debate as healthy, which is fine, becaus
Source: In These Times
November 27, 2007
In late October, Jackson County, Ore., re-opened the doors to 15 of its public libraries after a lack of funds had forced them shut on April 6 - the largest library closure in U.S. history. However, as patrons returned to the bookshelves in the southern Oregon county, they learned that their libraries are now under private, for-profit management.
Oregon suffered a $150 million budget shortfall - and Jackson County a $23 million loss - in fiscal year 2007, after the federal gove
Source: Legal Times
November 26, 2007
A weighty sense of anticipation hangs in the air as the senators filter into the vast chamber. Their faces are stony with the grave task set before them.
Scandal surrounds the president of the United States, and the U.S. House of Representatives has called for his impeachment. There is rampant speculation that the president is carrying on a homosexual, adulterous affair with the attorney general. On top of that, the president also stands accused of firing U.S. attorneys and replaci
